12.

Unknown to the Highborn or to Marten, the civil war entered a new and vastly more dangerous stage when Secret Police General James Hawthorne ordered code A-927Z beamed into deep space via a special laser lightguide flash. As per his orders, and without Director Enkov’s knowledge, Beijing HQ started the process by regular e-mail.

On a rather ordinary fish farm orbiting Earth, as yet untouched by Highborn suicide commandos, a communication technician read his e-mail with surprise. As ordered, he pulled up a standard production report and typed in the e-mail’s command. To the technician’s surprise, a secret computer file embedded in the report scrolled onto his screen. He read it and raised his eyebrows, but he knew better than to question an apparently senseless order when given under such strict conditions. So he aligned the lightguide flash-emitter to the dictated coordinates and typed the send sequence on his keyboard. Then he picked up his container of instacaf and took a sip.

On the outside of the space habitat a special laser lightguide tube popped up, adjusted with canny precision and shot a tight beam of light bearing the coded string: A-927Z. The tube then zipped back into its holder and triggered an unfortunate sequence of events, at least regarding the signal officer.

Vents opened in the communication module’s ceiling and sprayed a fine mist of combustibles. The officer, with his container halfway to his lips for yet another sip, had time enough to say, “Hey,” as his computer files self-deleted. And a pre-timed spark ignited the mist. The explosion shook the entire space hab and demanded the full attention of all fire-fighting personnel and auto-equipment. The signal officer, his computer and various personal effects disappeared in the ball of explosive flame.

Meanwhile, the communication laser flashed through space at the speed of light, three hundred thousand kilometers a second. The lightguide system had a singular benefit over a regular radio message. A tightly beamed communications laser could only be picked up by the receiving station it hit. That, however, demanded precision, and the farther the target, the greater the precision needed. This flash had a long journey in terms of solar system distances, thirty AU or 4,347,400,000 kilometers. Thus, traveling at the speed of light, the message reached the selected target, Neptune habitat, roughly four hours after it had been sent.

The personnel there decoded the flash and read A-927Z. It had an effect similar to a spade overturning an ant colony: boiling activity erupted.

Toll Seven had docked his ultra-stealth pod some time ago, his cargo discharged and stored in deep freeze along with a thousand other carefully stolen people. Workers with hand trolleys entered the locker. Osadar Di, stiff as a log and almost as dead, found herself propped upon one of the first trolleys and rolled to the beginning of a process which would grant her new life but at the cost of her humanity.

Thankfully, for her and her sanity, she had no awareness of the first steps. Set on a conveyer, she traveled to a thawing tank. Immersed in aquamarine liquid, her frozen limbs and torso grew supple. The analyzers attached to her beeped at the right moment and a lifter set her on a new conveyer, where she received a shock of life. Her entire body jerked so hard that she tore several muscles, a minor but not unnoticed matter to the monitoring AI. With an agonizing wheeze, Osadar took her first new breath and her eyelids fluttered. A fine mist rained upon her, killing all bacteria and other biological infestations. In that instant, she awoke to excruciating pain. The torn muscles brought her up sooner than anticipated. Somewhere an alarm rang. At this phase of transformation, her awareness was an unwanted anomaly.

Despite the pain, Osadar felt a great lethargy. Then it came to her that the robotic-looking man who had slain Technician Geller had shoved a needle into her. How long had she been out? She moved her head to the side, and screamed. Staring at her wide-eyed like a deader was the commander of IH-49. Others lay beyond him and they moved on an assembly line. Horror screwed up her face. She bit back a second scream, knowing that her worst fears had all along been right. Life was a rigged crapshoot meant to shaft you in the end no matter what you did.

Osadar tried to move her limbs, but they were so sluggish, and the torn muscles sent mind-rending pain messages to her brain.

Then emergency hypos shot her full of drugs and numbed her nervous system.

“No,” she whispered, struggling to rise before she slumped back into unconsciousness. A few moments later she entered the choppers, as the technicians there called them. In actuality, tiny vibroblades sliced the top-most layer of her skin, which was peeled away and discarded into a burner.

The entire process proved grim in the extreme. Director Enkov’s bodyguard had in many ways been rebuilt. But compared to what they did to Osadar Di he had merely had his toenails trimmed. They tore her down, removing her heart, lungs and kidneys. Finally, her brain was detached from her spinal column and placed into pink programming gel. The combination entered an accelerated life situation computer. Her brain along with others was electronically force-fed millions of pieces of new data. It was mostly tactical military information and how to use what would soon be her new cyborg body. The program then ran her through thousands of simulated situations:

She dropped Earthward in an attack pod. The pod peeled away and she floated on chutes. Two hundred meters above the ground the lines detached and she plummeted and landed in a crouch. Experiencing events within the simulator as if they were reality, she bounded in hundred meter leaps at the enemy, her thermonuclear slug-thrower chugging in controlled bursts. Within the simulator she target-practiced with dart guns, lasers, regular carbines, knives, spears; hurled grenades at super tanks, manned a laser battery and more. The events played until they became second nature. Within those events command words, obedience conditioning, how to use inner nanonics and other sundry cyborg functions were drilled into her.

At last, the data processing ended. Her brain emerged very different from when it had entered. Something of the old Osadar Di remained, but it lay submerged in the new cyborg personality, or the lack of it.

The reattachment of her brain to a new and improved spinal column was a delicate operation. The scientists and technicians on the secret Neptune habitat had learned to marry genetic human material to machinery like seamless cloth. An armored brainpan was only the beginning of it. She now had power-graphite bones, artificial muscles, millions of micro-nanonics in her bloodstream, an armor-plated body and eyes that could never be mistaken for human. Little was left of the old Osadar Di. And to make sure that that little part could never rebel, obedience chips were liberally sprinkled throughout her nervous system. A tiny powerful governing computer was linked to her brain and embedded within the central mass.

The process from Suspend-dead human to cyborg took two weeks. Training her to use her new body would take another three. Then Cyborg Osadar Di— better known as OD12—would enter the first ultra-stealth pod to make the many-months long journey from Neptune to Earth.

Then maybe Social Unity could finally regain the initiative against the Highborn.